


Wanting what we can't have.

by willneverbreakme



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-11 05:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1169112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willneverbreakme/pseuds/willneverbreakme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For every dead soldier there is someone who needs them back. For every lost cause there is someone who still hopes.</p><p>It's just a shame that Mikasa and Jean are only wanting what they can't have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wanting what we can't have.

For Jean the memory was never far away; the memory of Marco, so sweet and yet always inevitably followed by the bitter memory of his death, and the ever present ache in Jean's chest. Knowing that he would never see Marco again, never feel warmed by his smile nor comforted by his words, never again feel like there was someone who loved him and trusted him and had faith in him as much as Marco had.

Most of the time Jean was able to ignore it, to push it away and put Marco out of his thoughts, but sometimes the boy's freckled face fought its way into Jean's mind and wouldn't be shifted, the smile brought to his lips reliving Marco's laugh instantly dimmed by the realisation that he would never hear it again. At times like this it was all Jean could do not to break down completely, but he no matter how hard he fought, he still couldn't restrain himself from one single muffled sob.

Standing up suddenly and turning to face the wall, staring resolutely at a crack in the brickwork, he pretended to study the plan again until he had control of himself. He hoped that none of the rest of the corps had heard him or noticed. He let out a quiet and shaking breath as it seemed they hadn't, or were at least polite enough to pretend.

He swallowed, preparing to turn back around, then jumped in shock as a hand gripped his arm. It was a gentle grip, to go with the soft voice as Mikasa spoke from behind him. "Don't want what you can't have."

She went back over to their fellows, watching with her usual impassivity while Jean used his anger at her words to steel himself and turn back around.

He shouldn't have been so offended; Mikasa knew what she was talking about. She had great experience in wanting what she couldn't have.

When she was young she had wanted more friends, she had wanted more people her own age to play with and talk to; she had wanted other girls who she could show how to embroider and who could maybe teach her how to knit, she wanted boys to play with outside and show her how to climb trees because her dad said it was too dangerous for her but she’d always wanted to anyway. But she knew that there weren’t that many kids in the area to play with, and so Mikasa had had to play on her own.  
A few years later and she had wanted her life back. She had wanted to live in her own home and to sit around the table with her mother and father and to talk and laugh like she used to. But her parents were dead, her house sold, and she hadn't laughed like that since her family had been slaughtered in front of her, she had been kidnapped to be sold into sex slavery and she had killed a man.  
For years after that all she had wanted was a family, even if it wasn’t technically hers. Eren’s family was more than good enough, Eren’s mother as her mother, Eren’s father as her father (even if they were only surrogate), and Eren as her brother. She had already lost one family, she clung to her new one and losing it was all she feared. A family was her desperate wish, even after she had watched another mother die to save her and was abandoned by her new father.

But, more than she had wanted those friends, more than she had wanted a family, more even than she had wanted her parents back, Mikasa wanted Eren.

She wanted Eren to be happy (but she'd hardly seen him smile since his mother had died) and healthy (even when there had only been a roll of bread to eat in a day, even when he had been lying in the back of a cart, too weak to move and with a bandage around his head) and hers.  
But there wasn't ever even a time to look back to when she could pretend that he had been hers. It hadn't been any of the times she had begged him not to join the survey corps, it hadn't been any of the times he had transformed into a titan (he hadn't even recognised her), it hadn't been when he had looked like that about Annie, and it hadn't been when they were kids and Eren had insisted that he didn’t need her help with everything.

And it wouldn’t be any times in the future. Mikasa didn't know who it would be, assuming they lived long enough, who would be the one standing next to Eren in a white dress, didn't know who would be the one Eren chose to take to his bed for the first time (or the last time), didn't know who would be the one Eren trusted his soul to when the time came, but it wouldn't be her. Not her.

To Eren, Mikasa was a sister, a soldier, a friend at the very best, and even to ask for more would be to crush everything she had between her palms like a skull between titan fingers. 

To Mikasa, Eren was her missing piece, her friend when she had had none, her saviour from those who had hurt her, her family when all others were dead, and with him in her she felt complete, even when she was missing so much.

But she could live with her relationship with Eren, the gap between what she wanted and what she had was something she could deal with (although the occasional sightings of the other side, the side of the chasm she wanted to be on, were still painful to her), whereas life without Eren, without any relationship with him at all or chance to see his face again was unthinkable. Unliveable. Unendurable. 

So when Mikasa had warned Jean against wanting things he couldn't have, it was from experience. She knew what it was to long for comfort that would never present itself, for flesh that would never meet hers and for a future that she could never even reach for.

It was just a shame she couldn't tell Jean how to move on.


End file.
